New on Blu-ray: OUTLAND (1981), ALTERED STATES (1980), and TWINS OF EVIL (1971)

OUTLAND
(UK - 1981)

Conceived by writer-director Peter Hyams (CAPRICORN ONE) as an outer-space western, OUTLAND finally gets a worthwhile home video presentation on Blu-ray.  The long out-of-print DVD was one of the first issued in the format and was utterly abysmal in quality.  OUTLAND did generally well at the box office in 1981 and has always been held in high regard by genre fans, and despite a couple of dubious effects shots late in the film, it's aged very well.  Sean Connery is O'Niel, a Federal Marshal assigned to a one-year tour heading the police force on Io, the third moon of Jupiter, where Con-Am runs a very profitable titanium ore mining facility. Sheppard (Peter Boyle), Con-Am's manager on Io, is very proud of his operation's increased productivity and profitability and politely tells O'Niel to just go with the flow.  O'Niel senses something fishy when two miners have psychotic episodes resulting in their deaths.  Sheppard orders the bodies sent back to the space station off Jupiter but O'Niel manages to get a blood sample from one and with the help of curmudgeonly, hard-drinking Dr. Lazarus (Frances Sternhagen), finds traces of a powerful experimental drug that allows users to stay up for days on end, thus increasing their furious work output.  The side effects, Lazarus says, are that continued use can cause complete psychotic breaks after 10 or 11 months.  Sheppard and some associates are running the drug operation into Io, and as long as productivity, profits, and bonuses are high, everyone, including O'Niel's deputy Montone (Hyams regular James B. Sikking), is content to look the other way.  When O'Niel doesn't back down, Sheppard and Con-Am execs decide to bring in three hit men from the space station to kill him, and it's here that OUTLAND turns into essentially a post-STAR WARS variation on HIGH NOON, complete with a large digital clock in a sleazy Io bar showing the countdown to the next shuttle arrival.  Like Gary Cooper's Will Kane, Connery's O'Niel is forced to face the killers alone (with a little help from Lazarus), as an entire work force of minors and even his own deputies prove unwilling to help him. 

OUTLAND is a top-notch sci-fi thriller and the miniatures and matte work still look superb and are more convincing today than most CGI.  The cast is terrific--Connery and Sternhagen make an unlikely and very likable team, and Boyle is memorably smug, telling Connery to "go home and polish your badge...you're dealing with grown-ups here."  It's a film that's fallen through the cracks over the years, but hopefully this proper HD presentation will allow it--and Hyams, a very underrated director and wonderfully snappy writer who was unstoppable in his 1974-1990 prime--to find a new audience.  Hyams provides a newly-recorded commentary that covers all elements of the production (he wanted to call it IO, but everyone kept mistaking it for 10), with a lot of interesting Connery stories (they also worked together on 1988's THE PRESIDIO).  Also with Clarke Peters (THE WIRE, TREME), Steven Berkoff, and John Ratzenberger as a freaked-out miner whose head explodes in the opening scene. (R, 109 mins)

ALTERED STATES
(US - 1980)

It's a testament to just how much filmmaking, marketing, and audiences have changed over the last 30 or so years when one considers that Ken Russell's surreal, philosophical, challenging, jargon-heavy, sensory-deprivation, devolution sci-fi/horror mindfuck was not only bankrolled by a major Hollywood studio (Warner Bros.) with an unknown (William Hurt in his debut) in the lead role, but it was released in theaters on Christmas Day 1980. ALTERED STATES tells the story of psych professor Eddie Jessup's (Hurt) search for the Ultimate Truth via isolation tank and a hallucinogenic mushroom-based solution concocted by an indigenous Mexican tribe that's purported to take one back to "first soul" and be "propelled into the void."  The more time he spends in the tank with himself as the experiment, monitored by a colleague (Bob Balaban), an endocrinologist (Charles Haid), and later, his estranged wife (Blair Brown), the more Jessup's genetic makeup devolves with horrifying results.  Written by Paddy Chayefsky (NETWORK), who fought with Russell and took his professional name off the finished film (going by his real name, Sidney Aaron), ALTERED STATES is pretty deep and heady stuff, filled with stunning (though a bit dated today) imagery and visual effects and room-shaking sound (which got an Oscar nod).  As ambitious and thought-provoking film as it is, it probably ranks as one of Russell's more strangely commercial films, and the one-sheet depicting Hurt upside-down in the flotation tank immediately became an iconic image.  The film (also featuring Drew Barrymore, in her first film as well, playing one of Hurt's young daughters) instantly put Hurt on the map as an actor to watch and he'd have an Oscar within five years for 1985's KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN.  Hurt is so familiar as a reliable character actor in supporting roles these days that it's easy to forget he was an A-list star in the 1980s.  The new HD transfer for the Blu-ray release is crystal clear and absolutely beautiful.  The only extra is a trailer, but at a relatively low price, this is the best ALTERED STATES has ever looked.  (R, 103 mins)

TWINS OF EVIL
(UK - 1971)

Hammer's box office appeal may have been in decline by the early 1970s, but some of the studio's best films were being made in this period, as evidenced by John Hough's TWINS OF EVIL, just out on Blu-ray from Synapse Films.  The third in the studio's "Karnstein" trilogy (after 1970's THE VAMPIRE LOVERS and 1971's LUST FOR A VAMPIRE), based on the works of J. Sheridan Le Fanu, TWINS OF EVIL has twin Playboy playmates Mary and Madeleine Collinson as orphans sent to live with their puritanical, cold-hearted uncle Gustav (Peter Cushing), a local witchfinder who leads a group of religious fanatics called The Brotherhood, finding presumed witches and burning them at the stake.  One of the twins falls under the spell of Count Karnstein (Damien Thomas, who has a strange resemblance to Jimmy Fallon), a wealthy, well-connected Satanist whose activities have awakened undead vampire Mircalla (Katya Wyeth).  Written by Tudor Gates and featuring David Warbeck and Dennis Price, TWINS OF EVIL is a highly enjoyable cult horror classic that showcases elements of the newly-explicit vampire genre (Hammer was taking advantage of the increasing demand for gore and nudity) and gave Cushing an opportunity to take part in the then-trendy "witchfinder" films popularized by 1968's THE WITCHFINDER GENERAL (with Vincent Price), 1970's THE BLOODY JUDGE (with Christopher Lee), and 1970's MARK OF THE DEVIL (with Herbert Lom).  Cushing turns in one of his all-time great performances here, showing the complexities of noble intentions gone horrifically awry.  Cushing's wife died unexpectedly shortly before filming began, and he's bringing a wide range of emotions to his role here as his Gustav is ultimately both terrifying and tragic.  Synapse's Blu-ray transfer is absolutely impeccable, and it's loaded with bonus features, including the feature-length documentary THE FLESH AND THE FURY, which explores the works of Le Fanu, the "Karnstein" trilogy, and the making of TWINS OF EVIL, with appearances by genre luminaries and historians like Joe Dante, Kim Newman, Tim Lucas, Ted Newsom, David J. Skal, and Sir Christopher Frayling, in addition to TWINS co-star Thomas and director Hough.  One of 2012's best Blu-ray releases.  (Unrated, 87 mins)

New on Blu-ray: RED SCORPION (1989) and TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS (1973)

RED SCORPION
(US - 1989)

An expensive, controversial box office bomb that became a hit in video stores, RED SCORPION now gets the deluxe Blu-ray treatment from Synapse Films.  It looks fantastic, far better than what's essentially an over-budget Golan-Globus ripoff should look (and with MISSING IN ACTION/INVASION U.S.A. director Joseph Zito onboard, it really does feel like Cannon).  Dolph Lundgren is Soviet Spetsnaz killing machine Nikolai Rachenko, ordered by his commander General Vortek (STRAW DOGS' T.P. McKenna) to go to the (fictional) African country of Mombaka (a stand-in for Angola) and assassinate Sundata (Rubin Nthodi), the leader of a group of anti-Communist rebels.  Sure enough, Rachenko realizes who the real oppressors are and with the help of a grizzled American journalist (M. Emmet Walsh), Sundata's right-hand man (Al White), and an elderly bushman named Gao (played by 95-year-old Regopstaan, an actual bushman), turns his back on his country and fights with the rebels, taking on the forces of Vortek, Cuban Col. Zayas (Carman Argenziano) and generic Commie henchman Krasnov (the great Brion James).

RED SCORPION is pure 1980s anti-Commie nonsense, not surprising given that it was the brainchild of a 30-year-old D.C. businessman, lobbyist, noted Young Republican, and fledgling movie producer named Jack Abramoff.   Yes, the same Jack Abramoff who was later convicted of fraud and tax evasion.  There's definitely a right-wing agenda to RED SCORPION, and it may be the only film about a Soviet military officer fighting with African rebels that's designed to have the audience still somehow chanting "USA!" when shit starts blowing up.  Abramoff's baby was a legendarily troubled shoot, as the production was kicked out of Swaziland just before filming began in 1987 and moved to Namibia and South Africa, during the anti-Apartheid boycott (another thing Cannon was frequently doing at the time).  This caused distributor Warner Bros. to back out and the indie Shapiro Glickenhaus Entertainment ended up releasing the film, which ultimately cost about double its original budget.  But with all that backstory and all those problems, watching the film today, it plays surprisingly well.  It's a cheesy '80s RAMBO knockoff (a monotone Rachenko to the Mombaka rebels: "Let's kick some ass") from start to finish, with tons of action, explosions, and impressive stunt work...the way it used to be done.  Synapse's Blu-ray package comes with a DVD copy of the film (both at 1.78:1, and the unrated, uncensored version), and tons of bonus features, including interviews with Lundgren, Abramoff, and special effects maestro Tom Savini, some behind-the-scenes footage, and a commentary track with Zito and Mondo Digital's Nathaniel Thompson.  RED SCORPION is not a classic awaiting rediscovery, but fans of over-the-top '80s action will find a lot to like.  Zito's engaging, informative, and refreshingly unpretentious commentary harbors no grandiose illusions about what the movie is and he talks a lot about what went into making this kind of action fare in the 1980s ("Action films like this are pure fantasy, but as a director, you have to know where you stand with a movie like this and it's up to you to establish the tone for the audience. You're not making APOCALYPSE NOW, but you're not making HOT SHOTS, either"). (Unrated, 106 mins)


TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS
(UK - 1973)

Going back to 1965's DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS, the anthology film was a staple of British horror cinema for nearly a decade.  A number of the more popular ones--like DR. TERROR, plus TORTURE GARDEN (1967) and TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1972), were directed by the venerable Freddie Francis.  Francis also helmed TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS, which isn't one of the most stellar examples of the subgenre.  The set-up is familiar:  a doctor (Jack Hawkins in his last theatrical feature; he died before it was released) visits a psychiatrist friend (Donald Pleasence), who introduces him to four asylum inmates and tells their stories.  "Mr. Tiger" is about a young boy's imaginary friend, a tiger that might not be so imaginary.  "Penny Farthing" is about a haunted portrait of an old man that wills an antique dealer (Peter McEnery) to travel back in time on a magic penny farthing bicycle.  "Mel" has Michael Jayston as a man who finds a tree stump (with "MEL" carved into a part of the bark) in the vague shape of a woman's body.  He brings it home as a piece of art to display in the house, but it soon casts some kind of seductive spell on him and provokes intense jealousy on the part of his wife (Joan Collins).  "Luau" has literary agent Kim Novak planning a Hawaiian-themed party for a popular young author (Michael Petrovitch).  Her attempts to get her client into bed are thwarted by her flirtaceous daughter (Mary Tamm), but Petrovitch has something else far more sinister and gruesome in mind.  Of course, this all leads to a tired twist at the end.  Except for a few late-period high points like THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD (1970) and TALES FROM THE CRYPT, anthologies of this sort were pretty much running on fumes by this point, and that's firmly exemplified by the uninspired TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS.  Written by "Jay Fairbank," a pen name for actress-turned-screenwriter Jennifer Jayne, these tales are more weird than scary, with "Mel" being the definite low point (especially its last shot).  As is normally the case with films of this sort, they save the best--relatively speaking--for last, but in this genre's prime, "Luau" would've been a first or second segment, certainly not the grand finale.  And the first three wouldn't have even made the cut.

Mel the Cockteasing Tree Stump in
the absurd TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS

At least it has an interesting cast, even if they're all clearly beneath the material.  Novak, still stunning and already in semi-retirement at just 40, was a last-minute replacement for an ill Rita Hayworth.  Other than doing a favor for her friend and PAL JOEY (1957) co-star, I can't imagine what she found interesting about this project.  Nevertheless, it does show some signs of life during "Luau" and Novak is terrific in her minimal screen time. Collins and Jayston can't do much with the silliness of "Mel," and you almost feel sorry for Jayston (NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA) when he's required to look turned on by "Mel" and somehow use all of his extensive thespian training to convince the audience that he wants to get it on with a tree stump.  Completists will probably get more out of TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS than the casual viewer, but even with its modern advances like occasional splatter and a couple bits of nudity, it's pretty C-list material at best, and Francis made much better films than this one in his long and stellar career as a director and cinematographer.  This is another Paramount title licensed to Olive Films, and their Blu-ray looks very nice and is framed at 1.78:1.  No extras, not even a trailer.  (R, 90 mins, also available on DVD)